St. Albert's school board trustees have given the new Education Act a tentative thumbs-up although they still aren't sure about its full effects.
The province tabled its 186-page Education Act Tuesday in the Legislature. The bill was at second reading as of Friday morning.
The bill doesn't have any big problems so far, said Lauri-Ann Turnbull, chair of Greater St. Albert Catholic Schools.
"We certainly think that giving more flexibility to boards is good for us."
Terry Jewell, chair of the Sturgeon School Division, said he was glad to see the bill's focus on bullying prevention.
"It's been really hard to effectively deal with bullying," he said, and this bill forces it into the spotlight.
It's also a lot bigger than the previous version, which is a bit of a surprise since the bill was supposed to be about less regulation and more flexibility, said St. Albert Protestant School board chair Joan Trettler.
"A lot of it still has to do with how it will be regulated."
New powers
One big change proposed by the bill involves giving school boards natural person powers.
Boards aren't currently considered persons under the law, Turnbull explained, and can only take actions explicitly allowed under the School Act. This bill would let boards do anything a real person could do under the law.
"It gives us the flexibility to fulfil our responsibilities."
What that flexibility means is an open question. As an example, Turnbull said it could let schools partner with community groups like anti-drug organization D.A.R.E., if they felt it would help students. "Everything we do would have to better the education of our students."
It would also let boards start moneymaking ventures such as wind farms, Jewell noted — one Fort McMurray board already plans to do so.
"I don't see us going out and starting casinos," he added, but it could give boards more chances to raise funds.
The bill also explicitly allows boards to charge fees for non-essential services such as hockey academies. The province has been letting schools do this for years, explained St. Albert Catholic school superintendant David Keohane, even though it's not technically legal.
New regulations will require schools to give the province detailed reports on how these fees are used, Education Minister Thomas Lukaszuk told a news conference. These fees should not be used to cover the costs of teaching basic curriculum courses, he added. "Any child who takes [just] the basics of the Alberta curriculum ought not to have any additional fees."
Trettler didn't expect this to lead to a flood of new fees or courses.
"We know very well if our [fees] are out of line, people will choose to go elsewhere."
Boards generally bring in new courses only when asked, and already waive fees for families that can't pay them.
New questions
Trustees were still grappling with the bill's changes to board elections. Currently, members of minority faiths cannot vote in public board elections if a separate board for their faith is present. This bill would let members of separate school boards vote for and run in public school board elections if they chose.
Everywhere else in Alberta, said Alberta Education spokesperson Donna McColl, this bill would apply to Catholics who want to run for the Protestant public board. In St. Albert, where the public board is Catholic, it would affect Protestants.
This would be a minor change for the Catholic board, Turnbull said — their voter's list would go from "anyone but Protestants" to just "anyone." "We're always the proponents of choice," she said, and there are already plenty of Catholics sending their kids to Protestant schools, and vice-versa.
Sturgeon School Division doesn't have a separate board, Jewell said, but this would let members of the five "four-by-four" Catholic regions run and vote for their board.
Trettler said she didn't have a problem with this change, but said it would be unfair to also let anyone run in separate board elections — the whole point of a separate board is to protect a religious minority. (Only Protestants can run and vote for St. Albert's Protestant board.) "If you really believe in public education, you should have the right to run for a public board."
Trustees were also uncertain about a tweak to transportation rules. The School Act requires students to live more than 2.4 kilometres from school before the province will pay for busing, Trettler said. While the new bill eliminates this limit, it doesn't say if the province will now pay the fare for kids who live within it. "The funding needs to follow that."
The bill would require students to stay in school until they were 17, instead of 16 under the current law, and would give them the right to attend school until they were 21, up from 19 today.
Jewell questioned whether this would affect completion rates. As long as we have a hot economy with high-paying jobs in the oilpatch, he argued, students will keep dropping out.
Still, said Turnbull, these changes would definitely help students who want to upgrade after dropping out but can't afford school. "Even if it's one kid, it's worth it."
Copies of the bill can be found at www.education.alberta.ca/educationact.
